Dr Colette Cunningham-Myrie, lecturer in the Department of Community Health and Psychiatry at UWI, Mona, wrote an excellent article in the Jamaica Observer on Thursday, October 29, 2014 relating her experience with the chikungunya virus. She outlined with medical clarity and anecdotal lucidity the ravaging effects it had on her body and mind.
She admitted in true Fentonian fashion that she didn't truly realise during her 23 years as a doctor the debilitating suffering that many of her patients endured physically and emotionally as they battled illnesses. CHIKV, she wrote, was her moment of medico-spiritual epiphany! Perhaps for the sake of her med students at UWI, she should launch a course called Medical Empathy 101. Her revelation has given us all our own moment of awakening.
Doctors like Dr Cunningham-Myrie are our health gatekeepers. As CHIKV ravaged the Eastern Caribbean, our health gatekeepers should have studied the virus and informed us on how to fight it with vitamin C, vitamin E, leaf of life, papaya leaf, bissy, turmeric, echinacea, golden seal, gelsemium, and other immune system boosters and joint care homeopathic medicines along with acetomenophin, antihistamines and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
Customs administrators should have thereafter played their part by opening the 'floodgates' and allowing these medicines in so that we could all be prepared!?
Do we realise that with a three- to five-year period of "aftershocks", this chikungunya virus will hamper the development and performance of our athletes for the next few years? Do we realise, therefore, that we may have to double our effort to get medals at the World Games in two years or at the Olympics in three years' time?
Do we realise that if Dr Cunningham-Myrie's article was written with the word Ebola instead of CHIKV there would be greater concern locally and internationally? Do we realise that with a population where reportedly eight per cent of us have sickle cell anaemia, 7.8 per cent arthritis, 28.9 per cent hypertension, 17.2 per cent diabetes, 13.3 per cent asthma, and an untold number with heart disease, all chronic illnesses, CHIKV compounds the health risks for quite a number of us? Do we realise that the preparations for Ebola by our gatekeepers are too slow for comfort?
But let's keep hope alive, for if one gatekeeper has awakened, maybe she will quickly awaken the others.
Michael Aiken
mandrewa@aol.com
Dr Myrie's column shined a light on things
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She admitted in true Fentonian fashion that she didn't truly realise during her 23 years as a doctor the debilitating suffering that many of her patients endured physically and emotionally as they battled illnesses. CHIKV, she wrote, was her moment of medico-spiritual epiphany! Perhaps for the sake of her med students at UWI, she should launch a course called Medical Empathy 101. Her revelation has given us all our own moment of awakening.
Doctors like Dr Cunningham-Myrie are our health gatekeepers. As CHIKV ravaged the Eastern Caribbean, our health gatekeepers should have studied the virus and informed us on how to fight it with vitamin C, vitamin E, leaf of life, papaya leaf, bissy, turmeric, echinacea, golden seal, gelsemium, and other immune system boosters and joint care homeopathic medicines along with acetomenophin, antihistamines and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
Customs administrators should have thereafter played their part by opening the 'floodgates' and allowing these medicines in so that we could all be prepared!?
Do we realise that with a three- to five-year period of "aftershocks", this chikungunya virus will hamper the development and performance of our athletes for the next few years? Do we realise, therefore, that we may have to double our effort to get medals at the World Games in two years or at the Olympics in three years' time?
Do we realise that if Dr Cunningham-Myrie's article was written with the word Ebola instead of CHIKV there would be greater concern locally and internationally? Do we realise that with a population where reportedly eight per cent of us have sickle cell anaemia, 7.8 per cent arthritis, 28.9 per cent hypertension, 17.2 per cent diabetes, 13.3 per cent asthma, and an untold number with heart disease, all chronic illnesses, CHIKV compounds the health risks for quite a number of us? Do we realise that the preparations for Ebola by our gatekeepers are too slow for comfort?
But let's keep hope alive, for if one gatekeeper has awakened, maybe she will quickly awaken the others.
Michael Aiken
mandrewa@aol.com
Dr Myrie's column shined a light on things
-->